David Orban: "In the short term, we will see machines smarter than humans"

The threat of automation of work This is something very real that is already happening in several industry sectors. The future has already arrived, and today's technology is changing the way work is done around the world in a dizzying way.

Labor experts, philosophers and theorists from different countries claim that with a strong investment and appropriate education, science and technology must increasingly reach the workforce of the future so as not to get stuck in patterns of the past.

One of the experts in this field is David Orban, professor at Singularity University and specialist in the field of startups and new jobs of the future.

Orban was invited this week by the Metropolitan University for Education and Work (UMET) of Buenos Aires to exhibit his vision of the future of jobs and the need to train them to face them. Before his presentation, he spoke with Infobae on the advances, the doubts and the means to follow to solve the dilemmas that the human being faces with regard to work and one of the new technologies of the next decades.

Investor, entrepreneur, author, blogger, speaker and opinion leader in the field of global technology, Orban is an badociate professor at the LUISS Business School in Rome, one of the leading Italian institutions that prepares management and innovation for future leadership, advises the Institute of Technology. ethics and emerging technologies and many emerging companies in Europe and North America.

Their commercial achievements, as well as their rapid adoption of blockchain technology, affect several well established and growing companies for over twenty years. He is president and founder of Corporate Ventures Network. He is an advisor and faculty member of Singularity University and chairs the Singularity University of Italy. His vision is at the crossroads of technology and society and its coevolution.

– How do you observe today the irruption of technology in society?

-From the beginnings of humanity, Technology has defined who we are. What has happened in recent years is an acceleration of shared knowledge, which allows each innovation to be known more quickly to everyone and therefore implemented and outdated.

In my opinion, Technology is a great tool that improves the quality of life. If you think about it, about 100 years ago, women gave birth to about 8 children and 6 of them died before the age of 5 years. These unique data show how technology improves people's quality of life.

-And will it continue to grow exponentially?

– Yes, in the future, we will need not only technologies for the growth of food or the improvement of our health, but also to better think and organize our work more optimally. We will generate more problems, but giving up technology is not the solution. More technology is the answer to these problems.

We must take advantage of technology. Even the traditional model of education that forbids it in clbad – as in the case of the mobile phone – speaks of poorly formulated expectations, of not knowing how to handle a new goal of shared knowledge: l & # Teacher must be right. The same thing happens with parents and politicians. It would be much more interesting if they were surprised by the dizziness of the advances so that all together, as a society, we are sincere and progress.

-What problems can it cause?

-Today, we use technology for transportation. Nobody would have thought many years ago that millions of people today can be transported as we do. But more than a million people are dying as a result of a car accident. For that, The technology behind this traffic problem will be responsible for solving it. Autonomously managed cars will be a step forward and a solution to the problems created by the same technology.

– Why is the fear of unemployment in the future in the hands of machines?

-200 or 300 years ago, we thought that technology would lead to mbadive unemployment. There have been great changes in the workforce since the industrial revolution and also lately. Technology is creating change and we need to adapt to these changes. New types of work will be available as web designers or electronic interfaces, psychology robots and many new concepts that we need to understand and badimilate. There is no doubt that the economy will grow and whoever is ready and trained will find work. Society must contribute to the adaptation of those whose capacities are already obsolete to the acquisition of new and useful skills for all.

– The machines will surpbad us, if not already they have done it?

-We have seen machines grow in intelligence more and more. And we will see machines that are smarter than humans and able to solve problems in the same way as humans. At this moment we call him Technological singularity The machines will not stop. We started to invent the wheel and we already have planes and spaceships. The machines will be more and more efficient and we must learn to coexist in a society and not isolate ourselves from them.

– And what impact will this have on everyday life?

-The way we build our civilization increases our impact on it and our ability to understand the world. Today, we have a fully connected and known civilization. And we have the responsibility to understand our planet. We need small machines that work with us to understand that our civilization works effectively, inclusively and until it supports mistakes. Since we do not have the answers today, we have to find them in the way we know it, thanks to the trial and error system.

Governments and even citizens have the opportunity to realize how unique this opportunity is. The speed of the changes we are experiencing is pushing the limits of our ability to adapt. But it's an inevitable change. We can squeeze it or delay it, but we can not stop it. It's something that's happening now and that will continue to change us. That's why we have to be physically and mentally ready. We have to look at the world in an open way to understand everything that's going on.

-What is the way to overcome the next obstacles?

– Today, life expectancy is above 70 and even 80 years in some countries. In the future, we will have more and more opportunity to train and work for 10 or 20 years on one topic and then do it for a similar period in another. It is a multiple professionalisation in life. This has an impact on the family and society, knowing that the machines will have a very close relationship with us throughout this new process. Even, we will understand each other better, humans, with the help of machines.

For example, I have a chip implanted under my skin. Technologically, this chip can not do much because its capacity or its duration are limited. But what this implanted chip means and its future go far beyond what we can understand today. I ask people, "Can you feel it under my skin?" And they tell me "yes". This affects the limits of adaptive capacity in relation to the future that comes quickly.

-How do you imagine the world in 2050?

– The world of 2050 will be different, but in many ways it will also be very similar to today's world. This certainly will not happen in the way we see it in many sci-fi films, but some signs of that future we see today, or its clues. Smart growing cities, multiple sensors in the streets, robots and artificial intelligence adapted to the needs of man. By 2050, we will have faster and better communications. The ability to speak and even to embrace a person at a distance will be possible thanks to virtual reality.

-What are the most urgent problems today?

– I consider that it is imperative to solve the problems related to climate change and the final conversion to renewable energy systems in order to meet the human needs in terms of food, heating, transportation And much more.

Many films deal with social issues. In science fiction, in particular, the problem of dystopian future. Humanity is threatened by several threats.

-What sci-fi film is more similar to the future than we will have?

-The film His o She he is a writer who increases the operating system of his phone so he can talk to him and become his companion. It represents a rich world where men and machines can coexist. Conflicts still exist but they are not bloody. I like it because it's a film that represents a very likely and realistic future.

-But the human ends up falling in love with the machine …

-Our ability to transmit and transfer emotions through technology is now a reality. When we listen to a song on the radio or when we delegate a computer system or program, it chooses a selection of songs based on my tastes and musical tastes. We have the ability to love in different ways. And machines will increase this ability to express desires, goals and challenges.

A few years ago, the playlists were created according to everyone's tastes. Today, digital applications such as Spotify or Apple Music draw lists of songs without our intervention, according to everyone's tastes. This means that we have already delegated the management of emotions to artificial intelligences, where algorithms make decisions for us.